- The Sunday Scientist
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- #12 How to find experts in your field
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When doing research, you may want to identify experts in your field for different reasons:
You want to know and follow “key opinion leaders” of your field.
You are looking for mentors
You want to find researchers to work with them:
- Such collaborations can vary from simple discussions to co-publication.
- You may also want to join their team. Regardless of the sector (academia, industry, government, nonprofit etc.)
Finally, a common challenge is to find experts to review manuscripts or funding applications.
In this newsletter, I list a few techniques that you can apply to shortlist experts in your field.
Let’s start with the key method.
Publications data
You might have heard or read: “Researchers are what they publish”.
Although this is very limiting, scientific publications' data can reveal a lot of information about their authors.
This is the data I use when looking for experts in a specific field.
I run search queries about my topic of interest in the Web of Science.
I usually limit my search to the past 3 to 5 years to find active researchers and have recent information about them.
Analyses
Once I find the relevant publications, I can conduct different analyses.
I can quickly see:
who the most publishing researchers are
their affiliations
the exact research topics
their collaborators
the funding they received
their citation impact
This gives me an idea of the profile of active researchers in my field.
Information
When looking at their individual profiles in bibliographic databases, I can find various indicators about their publishing activities.
Such information may include:
their recent publishing affiliations
their topics of interest
their publishing career history
the number & list of publications
the number of citations and other citation indicators such as average number of citations per publication
If the researcher manages the profile, you may also find extra information like:
their peer-review activity
their editorial board memberships
their co-authors network
normalized citation impact by field and year for better comparison with peers
and authors with similar activities
All this information helps to have some visibility of someone’s expertise.
Contact
To contact them, you will find their email address in the publications where they are the corresponding author.
Although I limit my searches to the past 5 years, some researchers might have moved to other institutions. And their email addresses might not be active anymore.
In this case, you can still search for them through social media.
Win-win approach
The golden rule when contacting someone by email: think win-win:
Clear subject line
Personalization: include their name. Show that you have done some research. And mention one of their publications that is relevant to your work.
Introduce yourself briefly and mention why you contact them. Be relevant.
Be polite and professional. Check your spelling and grammar
Show the value the expert(s) would get from your collaboration
Propose clear next steps (call? Online meeting?)
Thank them for their time and consideration
Include your contact details in your signature
If no response, follow up after a few days
That’s it. This is my strategy to find and contact experts.
And that’s the best way to find various opportunities based on your expertise and interests.
If anything is unclear, please contact me and I will reply.
See you in the next newsletter!
Jamal
Question of the Week
What else would you do to find and contact experts in your field?
Share with us your advice and experiences in the comments section!
My favorite things
1. Two recent on-site sessions at a major research institution in Abu Dhabi (UAE). Lots of rich conversations with participants on recent technology developments.
2. The month of Ramadan started last week and fasting comes with multiple benefits: physical detox of course. But also connecting more with relatives and friends, sharing, spirituality, gratitude, and focus on important things.
Quote of the Week
“An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.”
― Nicholas Butler
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